19.5.2014 – loosening my grip

by deanmelbourne

Allowing myself the space to respond and react in a less structured or even inhibited way when making and thinking about painting is proving to be productive and relatively joyful. In attempting to observe the “patterns that connect” ( thank you Andy Parkinson) I hope to ,over a longer period, find out something about myself.

This process feels opposed to vehemently sticking to a pre constructed position or statement while creating a body of work. Allowing myself to not know the answers and to let the process of painting help me ask a question of myself and my understanding. To not have the answers or to admit that one never really did is both frightening and liberating. to make work without censorship and inhibition or to be constrained by a sense of what a “serious” artist looks like and more importantly by what the people who’s opinion I value may or may not think.

One noticeable difference is that I now find myself constantly alert and excited by new trains of thought. By making connections from one subject to another and letting serendipity and chance guide my choices there is now abundance of opportunity where before there was a baron and confined path.

thoughts and notions do come and go and drift like mist though. I want to try and capture them.

Exposure, erotic game playing, voyeurism. Back to nature, release, shedding the contemporary, reconnecting with the land with nature, with our animal selves. Amateur pornorgraphy, nudists. Normal people, bigger, older more real.

Celebration. My relationship with the country side. Association with a sense of magic and wonder. ” a bustle in you hedgerow” led zeppelin, lord of the rings. Local landscape and urban nature, unofficial country side by Richard Mabey. Observing nature in detail. The canal side. the hedgerow. Nature as symbol Graham sutherland and john piper, archaic systems and rhythms. Placing myself beyond the immediate, in a bigger context.

Gardens, tamed nature, man made havens, secrecy, flowers and foliage. My relationship with the a notion about femininity. Revisiting cross dressing and its motivations. Gardens and nature used in very feminine photography, editorials, prettiness. A mystery, a magic of another world that is not available to me. Coming from and living where I do. Fabrics and perfumes, gentleness and safety. Away from the alpha competitiveness of men.

Seers, those seeing more than the average person, like birds seeing more of the spectrum than us. Those that saw fairies or sensed magic were thought of as being more perceptive, more sensitive. Robert kirk. before being demonised , witch hunts.

amongst the noise of the modern world , images of nature even in fashion editorial pull at us and seduce with there perfection.

I am drawn to them as I am drawn to erotic images and the reactions are complex contradictory and in parallel.